A quiet morning reply to Bart’s Fraiku, my worn lenses lifting me toward today’s blurry blue sky.
Bart >> Fraiku: For Your Eyes | Bartholomew Barker, Poet
My Vision (a Senryu)
In front of my eyes
Beyond dust-covered lenses
I pause to see more
And the vision carried on beyond the frame.
Ivor Steven © September 2026
Twelve months ago, while visiting my cousins on Vancouver Island, I tapped out a small poem on my iPhone — a moment shaped by cedar shadows, cold tides, and old family echoes. Today’s Throwback Friday returns to that quiet day, and to the fallen ancestors the island seemed to remember.
Fallen Ancestors
Above
I saw time drift across the sky.
Below
I heard a grey, waterlogged tree cry,
“Is this the graveyard where my
fallen ancestors have been left to die?”
There
“Against the sea wall’s merciless granite crown,
surrounded by cold water crashing around…
Please
“Take my hand, guide me down,
so I can cover them with my green nightgown.”
A quiet echo of the sea’s old memory — as the tide carries its stories forward, this song keeps a heart in the water.
.
Ivor Steven © September 2026
In the soft glow of a haloed sun, a seagull and his friends traced a tale across the sky — and one of them decided to share a little wisdom as he climbed into the light, shaping today’s poem.
Cyril the Seagull
Cyril is no ordinary seagull,
he’s neither plain nor dull.
I’ve been watching him and his friends,
soaring through the clouds’ sunny trends.
When he swooped in close enough,
I asked him off-the-cuff:
“Why are you considered to be
so commonly homespun?”
He puffed his wings like a bumblebee
and proudly flew off toward the sun.
Cyril whispered as he climbed:
Like humans, we also populate the world
However, I’m free to fly and enjoy
nature’s phoenix sky uncurled.
And as Cyril lifts into the light, this timeless song rises with him — a quiet reminder to simply be.
Ivor Steven © August 2026
Just before midnight, I wandered through Nancy’s whimsical corner of The Elephant’s Trunk, where her poetic mischief nudged me over the fence of common sense. In that soft hour, a playful spark took hold — and this anecdotal poem tumbled out as my midnight excuse.
For Nancy >> Poet’s Excuse – The Elephant’s Trunk
And because midnight rarely behaves itself, here’s Nick Cave’s “Night Raid” slipping in with its dark velvet mood before the poem leaps the fence again.
There Are No ‘Cents’ in Pretense
None of it needs to make sense
no matter present tense
or past tense
Your quill has a license
to leap the pretense fence —
forget about common sense
And write delicious nonsense
in future tense
with imaginative effulgence
And to round out this midnight ramble, here’s the song I shared with Nancy — Leonard Cohen’s wonderfully unusual “Ballad of the Absent Mare,” a wandering little masterpiece that trots alongside any poet willing to leap the fence of pretense.
Ivor Steven © August 2026
Morning wanderings often gift me small mysteries — a snail tracing Olympic rings across the cold pavement, a chalk‑scribbled “One Day” left by some early riser, and the quiet frost that makes creatures reconsider their usual routes. Today, Steve the Snail seemed to have a message for me… and perhaps for anyone feeling a little twisted by winter’s chill.
Over at Weekly Prompts, it’s the final weekend of August, and it’s time for the One Day Prompt. Please visit their fabulous site by clicking on >> Here
Steve the Snail’s Twisted Trail
I’m wondering if Steve the Snail is lost,
discombobulated by the morning frost
He usually leaves a straight-lined trail
from the rose garden to the window rail
But today his trail looked like Olympic rings —
perhaps a note left by his frozen shoestrings.
A gentle, pressing reminder letter:
“Hey Ivor … where’s my new winter sweater?”
For this frosty morning’s whimsical trail, I’ve paired Steve’s looping, Olympic‑ring wanderings with Nive Nielsen’s ethereal “Are You Ready” — a song that drifts like cold breath and whispers back at the paths we leave behind.
Ivor Steven © August 2026
The late afternoon moon often feels like a reminder — a quiet presence tracing its way across the sky while we trace our own paths below. In its soft light, every line in our hands and every mark on the land seems to carry a story of where we’ve been and where we’re still going. This poem rests inside that moment of reflection, asking what it means to follow the lines that shape our lives.
Tracing the Lines
There you are,
all of you,
way out there,
full and aware –
tracing the lines
in my hands.
And there are
no new brands
on the land;
every grain of sand
still understands.
There’s a crack
in everything –
in all of you
out there,
feeling open and bare –
tracing the lines
in my full glare.
A recently released piece, carrying the same gentle pull of the moon’s slow journey across the sky
Ivor Steven © August 2026
Continuing the Leonard Cohen thread from yesterday, today’s Throwback Friday poem, Destination (June 2024), began as a “writing between the lines” exercise for our Dome Poets group here in Geelong. Using Cohen’s The Goal as my guide (shared below), I tried to shape a companion poem that sits quietly between each of his lines.
Destination, by Ivor Steven
The curtains are open
The front door is ajar
So, I can hear her sing
From her distant star
I do not own much
My soul is a gold mine
I haven’t lost my touch
My heart is kind
I share what I have
I have hope and love
Couldn’t stop the flood
Couldn’t hold her glove
I walk alone
I look content
Regrets are few
Despair ferments
I push on and on
I do not complain
I’m still alive
I’m numb to the pain
No one asks
No one knows
About finality
Under the snow
===========================
“The Goal”, by Leonard Cohen
I can’t leave my house
Or answer the phone
I’m going down again
But I’m not alone
Settling at last
Accounts of the soul
This for the trash
That paid in full
As for the fall, it
Began long ago
Can’t stop the rain
Can’t stop the snow
I sit in my chair
I look at the street
The neighbor returns
My smile of defeat
I move with the leaves
I shine with the chrome
I’m almost alive
I’m almost at home
No one to follow
And nothing to teach
Except that the goal
Falls short of the reach
And finally, before the night fades, the poem whose shadows and truths shaped my own lines — Leonard Cohen’s The Goal.
.
Until Eyes Hear Sound
Amazon >> Amazon.com : Until Eyes Hear Sound
Lulu Books >> Until Eyes Hear Sound (lulu.com)
Perceptions:
Amazon >> Perceptions : Steven, Ivor, Knight, Derrick: Amazon.com.au: Books
Lulu Books >> Perceptions (lulu.com)
Tullawalla:
Amazon >> Tullawalla A Meeting Place Where My Empty Hands are Full of Memories and Rhymes : Steven, Ivor: Amazon.com.au: Books
OR: >> You may email me directly for a signed copy at
ivorrs20@gmail.com … and I can send you a PayPal account,
for the Book, plus Postage.
Ivor Steven © August 2026
Sometimes a single flight can carry more meaning than the landscape beneath it.
This morning’s mudlark — lifting from foreign sands, gliding toward familiar green, then swept off course by an unexpected breeze — became the quiet messenger behind this piece. Its journey echoed the fragile paths we all take toward understanding, toward apology, toward peace.
What followed was a poem shaped by wings, weather, and the distant hum of icy choirs.
Winging Toward Peace
Swooping out past the sands of foreign ground
Then flying toward the green, bushy trees
of that once-fabled promised land —
only to be diverted by a bold eastern breeze
that buckled my wings and trembling knees
and sent me falling into the Arctic freeze,
where icy choirs continue the cheers
still singing in the hush of sub‑zero seas
There, huddling inside an iceberg’s solitary marque,
all the compassionate delegates from overseas
gathered to hear pleas for apologies and guarantees
from Greenland’s patient, peaceful trustees.
From foreign sands to frozen seas, the journey ends where quiet voices still know the weight of peace. And so, in Greenland’s calm, the final note on harmonious independence lingers.
Ivor Steven © August 2026
Last night’s twilight slipped across the sky in muted layers — a quiet blend of fading colour, soft cloud, and the half‑moon’s pale glow behind drifting haze. Standing there with the camera, I felt the day thinning into something slower, dimmer, almost weightless.
From that hush, this small poem emerged — a reflection on how light, taste, and time blur at the edges as evening diffuses into night.
What Do You See 355
For WDYS, Sadje offers us a photo by Lensloji (Pexels) of a murmuration of birds forming a shifting pattern above a city skyline and minaret at sunset.
Opaqueness
Time is colourless,
yet daytime becomes darkness
as evening clouds advertise
twilight’s transient demise.
Time is tasteless,
yet midnight is infused with blackness
except for the half-moon’s translucent
loving spoonful of notilucence.
And in the quiet blur between knowing and not knowing, this song finds its way.
Ivor Steven © August 2026
These stunning silhouettes stopped me in my tracks — quiet guardians perched above a fragile world. Their calm presence sparked the environmental protest tone of the four couplets below, a reminder of what remains pure when we look up and listen.
The Overseer
I am the overseer of my kingdom,
a global realm without a dome.
No barbed-wire fences, only sky,
beyond mankind’s envious eyes.
No landmines, only trees,
to house and shelter me.
No hard rain, only the sun,
glowing, to enlighten everyone
“And now, let the sky speak, where the light continues in sound, with a final glow of gentle music.”
Ivor Steven © August 2026
Ivor.Plumber/Poet 